LONGMONT -- Oil and gas wells don't belong in a residential neighborhood. That's a familiar position for the Longmont City Council in 2012.

And apparently, also in 1995.

That's when the city condemned a gas well to help create the Ute Creek Golf Course. In the process, it declared that not only that well, but any well, had no business being near homes.

"The potential fire hazard of wells on and next to a residential community," reads ordinance O-95-47, "and the danger to residents and golfers from additional truck and service vehicle traffic and other perils associated with oil and gas development are contrary to the health, safety and welfare of present and future citizens, residents and golfers."

An attempt to place that idea in the city's zoning laws -- with, admittedly, no direct reference to golfers -- currently has Longmont in the middle of a lawsuit. In July, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission sued the city over its newly adopted oil and gas regulations. The eight items the COGCC has disputed include a restriction on surface drilling in residential areas and a requirement to disclose any hazardous materials transported on the city's roadways.

The Ute Creek action predated both those 2012 regulations and the city's last set of oil and gas rules, adopted in 2000. It also predates the common use of multi-well pads -- drilling multiple wells that reach in multiple directions from a single site -- and the modern controversy over hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," in which high-pressure fluid is used to crack rock deep underground to get at hard-to-reach oil and gas deposits.

The well condemnation was adopted in June 1995 and signed by then-Mayor Leona Stoecker. A court approved the action and granted the city possession that October, though the city did not post a bond with the COGCC until later, drawing a protest from the well's previous owner, TOP Operating.

"We have grave concerns that the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission will, by inaction, abrogate its authority to govern oil and gas operations in this state," TOP President Rodney K. Herring wrote to the COGCC. "The circumstances surrounding the condemnation of the subject oil and gas lease set a precedent that threatens your ability to govern and imperils all mineral properties in the Wattenburg gas field."

The well since has been plugged and abandoned.

"That particular well would have been pretty close to a platted lot, at least within 150 to 200 feet of a home," said city planner Brien Schumacher, one of the most involved in developing the city's new drilling rules. "It wasn't on the fairway, but it was on the fringe of the planned golf course, and there was concern about having the well that close to people's homes."

In urban areas, COGCC regulations call for a 350 foot "setback" distance between a well and an existing occupied building. That would not have applied in this case, since the well was on the site first.

"It was recognized that they're not good neighbors in a residential area," said then-city manager Gordon Pedrow, who since his retirement in April has been active in calling for stronger local control on oil and gas issues. "It was recognized even back then that it was an industrial use."

Stoecker has not taken a public position on the city's new oil and gas regulations, though she is one of seven former mayors -- along with Bryan Baum, Bob Askey, Roger Lange, Julia Pirnack, Al Sweney and Bill Swenson -- to publicly oppose Ballot Question 300, a citizen-initiated ballot issue to ban fracking from the city.

Stoecker could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.

The new oil and gas rules passed by a 5-2 vote, following a 4-3 vote to keep the residential restrictions in. Councilwoman Katie Witt, a "nay" vote on both measures, said she wasn't surprised that the issue had been a concern 17 years ago as well.

"I don't think anyone has any question about wells right next to someone's home," said Witt, who has argued that, because of the city's growth pattern, few if any Longmont residential areas are in danger of having a well nearby. "People have made it very clear they have no interest in that."

Meanwhile, Coombs said he didn't mind surrendering some of his "groundbreaker" status on the issue to Stoecker and the 1995 council.

"I think that's great that she had the foresight to think of these things back in 1995," Coombs teased. "I don't mind being second on this. I don't have to be first."

Local duo joining overseas exhibition excursionFilippo Swartz went to Italy, where his mother was born and he spent the first year or so of his life, every summer until he had to stick around to be a part of summer football activities for the Longmont High School team. Full Story

MacIntyre says the completed project will be best in Pac-12There were bulldozers, hard hats, mud, concrete trucks, blueprints, mud, cranes, lots of noise and, uh, mud, during the last recruiting cycle when Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre brought recruits to campus. Full Story

Most people don't play guitar like Grayson Erhard does. That's because most people can't play guitar like he does. The guitarist for Fort Collins' Aspen Hourglass often uses a difficult two-hands-on-the-fretboard technique that Eddie Van Halen first popularized but which players such as Erhard have developed beyond pop-rock vulgarity.
Full Story